A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Rating

Director

Renny Harlin

Screenplay

Brian Helgeland, Scott Pierce

Length

99 min.

Starring

Tuesday Knight, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman, Lisa Wilcox, Andras Jones, Danny Hassel, Brooke Theiss, Toy Newkirk, Robert Englund, Brooke Bundy

MPAA Rating

R

Review

Continuing the nomenclature of the previous sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master takes a page from its predecessor and duplicates that film’s successes to much weaker effect.

Kristen Parker (now played by Tuesday Knight) joins her surviving Elm Street 3 chums Roland Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey Crusel (Rodney Eastman) as they leave the sanitarium behind and enter the world of normalcy: high school. The film’s opening character development is severely lacking. Relying on audience knowledge of the previous film, we learn nothing more about this trio or how Kristen managed to become friends with Alice (Lisa Wilcox) and her pals.

Alice, like her friend Kristen, has a distinctive dream power that materializes after Kristen follows Kincaid and Joey into the great beyond. The three are killed off within the film’s first few frames to quickly dive into the new storyline.

Alice’s power is mitigated by others upon their deaths. She gains Kristen’s ability to draw others into her nightmares. The talent is especially troublesome when Alice first gains it because she’s unable to control it. It permits Freddy nearly unlimited access by frightening her into calling to her brother Rick (Andras Jones) and her friends Dan (Danny Hassel), Debbie (Brooke Theiss) and Sheila (Toy Newkirk) into her dreams. Only after Rick dies does she realize how much capability she’s achieved as she’s suddenly able to perform various martial arts moves that she couldn’t have performed previously.

As each character dies, she becomes more powerful until she’s forced to combat Freddy in the end and send him back to his grave.

L.A. Confidential scribe Brian Helgeland cut his teeth on this 1988 film, which he wrote for director Renny Harlin. Harlin does the most disservice to the film taking Helgeland’s intriguing premise and turning it into a sideshow of carnival theatrics with very little substance. The inventiveness of Freddy’s attacks takes a nosedive when we’re forced to watch for ten minutes as Debbie faces her insectoid fears inside a nightmare roach motel.

As she screams in fear, the audience is screaming in frustration as they wait for the film to come to a conclusion. It finally does, but not until after everyone’s drained of any sympathy they had for the characters.

The performances herein are capable, but wasted. Wilcox is neither interesting nor suited for her role. She plays the sweet naïf for so long that by the time she actually begins kicking ass, the viewer can’t help but wonder how and why. The film throws away its talent from the previous film giving Joey too brief a role and not being able to attract Patricia Arquette to briefly reprise her character. Even Theiss who later joined series star Heather Langenkamp on the short-lived Just the Ten of Us couldn’t free herself from the banality inflicted on her by the director.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is hardly the film one would have expected after Dream Warriors. Harlin’s style tramples on much of the good will its predecessor regained. The concept is destroyed and the audience annoyed, but unfortunately it would not be the last disappointment.

Review Written

September 5, 2007